The President of the Faculty of Public Health, Professor John Ashton, arrives to give evidence at the new Hillsborough inquests, at the Coronerís court in Birchwood Park, Warrington, Cheshire. Prof John Ashton is also the former North West director of public health and was at the Hillsborough ground as a fan on the day of the disaster. The new Hillsborough Inquests are led by Lord Justice Goldring, examines the deaths of the 96 Liverpool fans at the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989.

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The emergency response to the Hillsborough disaster was described as “woefully inadequate” by a public health expert who was at the match.

The inquests into the 96 deaths heard from Professor John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health, who attended the semi-final on April 15, 1989, with his two teenage sons and his nephew.

The court heard Prof Ashton had stayed outside the stadium while the other three went in as he felt claustrophobic in the crowd at the Leppings Lane turnstiles.

He said: “At this point there was an atmosphere of increasing anxiety and expressions of concern from the crowd about the pressure that people were under.”

He described going over to a police Land Rover and telling an officer inside: “You’ve got to get a grip of this situation, it is out of control, There is going to be a tragedy.”

A St John's ambulance arrives on the pitch at Hillsborough

He said the crowd seemed to disappear and he went into the ground just after kick-off time.

He said he had his ticket checked by a policeman as he went up the stairs to the West Stand, where his seat was.

He said: “There was a man came up to the police and was in a state of distress and he said, ‘There are kids dying in there. You’ve got to do something’.”

But he said the officer did not respond.

When he got to the stand he saw people being pulled up from the terraces.

Prof Ashton had to pause for a moment as he became emotional when describing his nephew, then 24, helping to pull people from the pens below.

The court heard he saw bodies that looked lifeless being taken onto the pitch and then heard a tannoy calling for doctors.

He said he went back down the stairs to the Leppings Lane concourse.

He said: “I assumed that there would be people to report to and be told how to help.”

In pictures: How the disaster unfolded

He asked a number of police officers where he should go but none of them were able to tell him.

Prof Ashton told the court he saw casualties being brought into the concourse and he began to institute a casualty clearing, or triage, system.

He said: “There were people who were very seriously ill or dead or different stages of consciousness, a lot of people with minor injuries, people who were in heightened emotional states, and a general atmosphere of hysteria and, you know, a really very distressing situation.”

He described a lack of equipment and said ambulances were slow to arrive at first, although there was a stream of them after about 3.45pm.

In the statement he made just days after the disaster, he said: “It is difficult to know how many lives might have been saved if the emergency response had been more effective, But, in my opinion, on this occasion, it was woefully inadequate.”

The inquests heard he had gone on a radio phone-in the evening after the disaster to discuss the emergency response.

But he said he was called at work, at the University of Liverpool, on the Monday by a man called Dr Alderslade who was the regional medical officer for Trent Health Authority.

He said: “Mr Alderslade told me that I should refrain from publicly criticising the emergency services.

“He told me that there had already been a meeting of the emergency services, and that they said that the ambulances had arrived promptly and that the emergency response had been good and adequate.”

Fans and ambulances outside Hillsborough on 15 April 1989

The court heard that before Prof Ashton left the ground on the day he had comforted a young police officer who was sobbing.

Prof Ashton said “He said something like, you know, ‘The senior officers were useless and they’re going to blame us now’.That was what he said to me.

“Of course the irony was that they didn’t blame the junior policemen, they blamed the supporters.”

The court heard from an off-duty nurse who also helped with casualties on the Leppings Lane concourse.

Liverpool supporter Paul Cunningham, a qualified general nurse, said he had been sitting in the North Stand.

He said when he saw fans coming onto the pitch from the Leppings Lane pens he decided to go to help.

But he told the court the stewards he asked did not know where to send him and he eventually had to run through a line of police to make his way onto the pitch.

Once at the Leppings Lane end he was taken through the tunnel to the concourse where he helped with casualties.

He said he had to physically push one police officer after he asked him to put a casualty in the recovery position and had no response.

In his statement Mr Cunningham said: “The lack of communication and organisation of the police and the inability of the police officers to carry out basic first aid measures, in my opinion as a health professional, directly contributed to the loss of life.

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